The ongoing industrial action initiated by the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) is a last resort by the nation’s educators to rein in the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Government to commence collective bargaining.
Executive member of the Working People’s Alliance ( WPA), Dr David Hinds said the failure of the Irfaan Ali led administration to effectively negotiate with the teachers’ union is certainly hurting the system.
Dr Hinds shared this view during an interview Tuesday morning on Antigua’s Twin Island 94.1 FM Wake Up Call radio programme.
The teachers’ strike has entered its second day, with the union expecting the government to meet with them to address what they believe is the administration’s utmost disrespect to those in the profession.
“ So the teachers’ union is left with no choice but to take industrial action. All doors have been closed to them.. The government has refused to meet with the union and this is the last resort,” he told the morning programme.
The teacher’s union has been seeking an audience with the government since it took office in August 2020 for negotiations on wages, salaries and allowances, to no avail.
Instead, the government has been imposing its own salary increases on teachers and other public servants at the end of each year. The last salary increase at the end of 2023 was a meager 6.5 per cent.
Guyana has been dubbed the fastest growing economy in the world and with a recently passed $1.1 trillion national fiscal plan, teachers, like other public servants, were expecting a livable income.
Dr Hinds said it is evident the government is pumping money into its own constituencies, a move that has dire political implications.
“The government of the PPP has really embarked on an overall programme of political domination of the society, using the oil revenue not to fairly distribute the benefits for all Guyanese, but as a tool of keeping the government in office.”
According to him, there has been no systematic policy of distribution.
“ The president goes around the country, meets with the fishermen and decide we are going to give you some handouts. Meets with sugar workers, he gives them $250,000 handouts. It has given teachers $45,000 per year, while it has given sugar workers $250,000 and rice farmers even more than that.”
He pointed out that sugar workers and rice farmers are among the large constituencies that support the government.
Dr Hinds argued that Guyana has enough resources to distribute equally among all workers across the board. The government has however refused to do so because it has little interest in policy, and is more concerned with using the country’s oil revenue to retain power.
“That is the tangle the government has found itself in. It is at the level of equitable distribution.”
“Workers who do not fall into the natural constituency of the government are the ones that are not given a livable wage and that has ethnic implications because those workers who are not in the natural constituency of the government such as nurses, such as teachers, such as government workers, are mostly African Guyanese.”
Meanwhile, the university professor gawked at claims that the teachers’ strike is illegal and political.
He recalled that back in 2018, teachers were engaged in a nine-day strike action against the then A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) Government, an administration most of them supported, for the very demands now being made. Those stipulations were met and the strike was called off.
He said Guyana has historically been supportive of trade unions’ right to represent workers. It is therefore callous for the government today to be hostile to workers strike.
“They are basing that illegality on the fact that the Chief Labour Office has reasoned that the government has met 21 of the 35 grievances presented by the union, hence the workers have no legitimate reason to go on strike, and so the strike is illegal,” Dr Hinds said of the PPP Government.
